la k^Md §fi/Cat^iuLo /p/ Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/americanpaintersOOsheriala 2 a. DC U ^^ a w u o I a I— u X I' < o a o u. ^> iPijdA) AMERICAN PAINTERS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY BY FREDERIC FAIRCHILD SHERMAN NEW YORK PRIVATELY PRINTED MCMXIX •• . ) • Copyright, 1919, by Frederic Fairchild Sherman Libra; TO MY FRIEND DOROTHEA A. DREIER HCQ •J 459278 CONTENTS PAGE Miniature Landscapes by J. Francis Murphy ... 3 The Landscape of Dwight W. Tryon 13 Four Figure Pictures by George Fuller 21 Early Oil Paintings by Winslow Homer 29 Figure Pictures by Wyatt Eaton 39 Arthur B. Davies 47 Early Genre Pictures by Harry W. Watrous . 55 Benjamin West 63 Vll ILLUSTRATIONS J. FRANCIS MURPHY The River Farm Frontispiece PAGE Twilight 6 Late September 6 Golden Autumn 8 DWIGHT W. TRYON Glastonbury Meadows 14 Cernay La Ville 14 Early Morning, September 16 Twilight, November 18 GEORGE FULLER The Romany Girl 22 Winifred Dysart 22 The Quadroon 22 Psyche 22 WINSLOW HOMER Haymaking 29 The Song of the Lark 30 A French Farm 30 Prout's Neck 34 ix WYATT EATON Portrait of William Cullen Bryant 40 Ariadne 4^ Lassitude 4* Reverie 4* ARTHUR B. DAVIES Girl at the Fountain 50 The Violin Girl 50 Clothed in Dominion S^ HARRY W. WATROUS L'Addition 56 The Guitar Player 5^ Records S^ Lost S^ BENJAMIN WEST Portrait of John Sedley 64 Portrait of a Gentleman 66 The Envoys Returning from the Promised Land 68 Presentation of the Queen of Sheba at the Court of King Solomon 68 MINIATURE LANDSCAPES BY J. FRANCIS MURPHY AMERICAN PAINTERS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY MINIATURE LANDSCAPES BY J. FRANCIS MURPHY ERE size of itself has little or nothing to do with the greatness of any work of art, and yet many amateurs of today, especially in this country, persist in thinking and speaking only of large paintings as important pic- tures. Small as well as large paintings are some- times important, and whoever habitually overlooks them necessarily misses a considerable measure of what is best in pictorial art. Among our native landscape painters J. Francis Murphy has to his credit a sufficient number of land- scapes in miniature of various periods to constitute a little gallery as representative as any that could be formed by gathering together a similar number of his large canvases. Quality, which is a very attrac- tive element in his big pictures, his smaller works possess in a superlative degree. The natural inti- macy of their appeal, however, is in no sense encom- 3 passed at the expense of any sacrifice of spatial design or atmospheric envelopment which have so much to do with the authority as well as the beauty of his interpretation of nature. The best of his large pic- tures have their counterparts in miniature — little canvases that are just as truly and unmistakably masterpieces of landscape painting. One may study in them the characteristic technic of the artist, his sensitive subordination of insistent though inhar- monious passages of color, and his discrimination and discretion in deliberately emphasizing the larger and finer aspects of linear design and chiaroscuro. In other words the best of these little landscapes are in every way as truly great pictures as the best of his large canvases. Murphy is, I think, as Blakelock was, always at his best in his smallest and his largest pictures. The intermediate sizes seem not to afford area enough for his biggest efforts and yet to be too large to per- mit of his achieving in them that intimate touch which so sensibly enhances the charm of the smaller sizes. His little landscapes are more definitely repre- sentative and more truly expressive of nature herself, while his large landscapes oftener than not impress one as embodying rather his own feeling as he reacts to whatever mood it is he has chosen to interpret. It is a curious characteristic of his art that while in his miniature canvases we often find various sub- sidiary elements of interest such as buildings, boats, figures and the like, the larger pictures seldom if ever present any variety of interest whatever, the whole canvas being deliberately devoted to the ade- quate expression of a single emotion, however elu- sive, and with no more of a foundation in the facts of nature than will suffice to frame the transitory loveliness of a moment. As a consequence of this method some of the large pictures seem relatively empty and sometimes, I think, rather uninteresting when the aerial envelope is insufficient of itself to clothe them in a beauty of its own or his effort to secure unusual quality is unsuccessful. The delicate gradation of values that counts for so much in his small canvases, if it fails to interpret his mood, be- comes monotonous in the larger pictures. On the other hand all the evanescent loveliness of atmos- phere is just as truly a part of his small as of his large paintings, only in them it is seemingly more a part of the scene itself and less an expression of the mood in which he worked. I do not wish to convey the impression of being insensible to the merits of the large canvases —they are too obvious to permit of their being overlooked by anyone who is at all sensitive to what is most truly beautiful in contemporary American landscape art. In suggesting minor faults which one finds in some, I do not mean to imply that they are common even 5 in the large canvases or that the smaller pictures which I have chosen to write about here are faultless. However, any inaccuracy in interpretation in a land- scape of considerable dimensions is, simply because it involves so much in the way of mere representation, seemingly exaggerated, while a similar defect in a small painting is less likely to be discovered except as one studies it closely. I am not sure either that it is not true that in working a painter senses an inaccurate rendering in a small picture more often than in a large canvas, in the elaboration of which he is absorbed by subtleties of mood and emotion rather than by problems of actual representation. Thus Murphy's miniature landscapes have, I believe, a more definite aspect of reality while his larger pic- tures appeal to us more particularly because of their successful embodiment of spiritual values. In the eighties and the nineties Murphy produced some of his finest works. As early as 1897 his inter- pretation shows a tendency toward that sensitive re-creation of delicate atmospheric harmonies which constitutes the great charm of his present work. The earlier pictures and especially the smaller of them are appreciably more realistic. They convey more of an idea of the actual beauty of nature un- altered by hazes, mistiness and half-lights. His pres- ent intention seems rather to embody in just these unsubstantial elements a sufficient emotional in- 6 H A, s ^ ^ Cj terest in the way of an expression of mood to satisfy one, regardless of the consequent lack of definition in the more elementary and substantial beauties of the earth. Inasmuch, however, as the mood in any given canvas is personal, it mvolves the in- tegrity of the whole composition as an interpreta- tion of nature, and leaves one eventually dissat- isfied though perhaps unaware why. Only when he successfully interprets nature's moods are his later landscapes really great, because unmistakably true. The importance of these works is the greater because of the difficulty of the problem of producing in a convincing counterfeit of unsubstantial aerial envelope a reaction to an exquisite mood. Com- pared to the representation of the definite and ob- vious beauty of any scene from nature such a canvas is a real revelation of the possibilities of oil painting, and we therefore rightly estimate the best of them as the greatest of Murphy's paintings. His earlier works are, however, more consistently satisfying because more generally successful. And their success is, I think, largely a matter of their being concerned chiefly with rendering the concrete rather than the abstract beauties of nature — the simple loveliness of certain scenes rather than those subtle atmospheric conditions in which the moods of nature are more sensibly felt, but which are in- finitely more difficult to insinuate into an oil paint- 7 ing. Indeed, considering his present problem, I do not so much wonder that some of his pictures fail to fully realize his intention as that such a number come so nearly to being entirely satisfactory in their embodiment of the spirit rather than the form of nature. The River Farm, six by twelve inches, reproduced as the frontispiece to this volume, and the Twilight of approximately the same size, dated 1884, are .exquisite examples of the early period. The Late September of 1897 and the Golden Autumn of 1908, also very small canvases, show satisfactorily Mur- phy's development in the direction I have mentioned. The River Farm, with its houses and barns, hay- mow and boat at the water's edge, soft green meadow and distant fields, is a well-nigh perfect poem of country life. The cool blue of the sky where it shows through the soft white clouds is beautifully reflected in the placid waters of the river, together with all the charming detail of the foreground, and helps to make it a singularly attractive picture. The Twilight is a similar composition, the chief interest, however, being a fine rendering of the glamour of the afterglow.